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Governor Glenn Youngkin on Monday issued Executive Order 39, which is designed to reduce wait times, reduce costs and improve the permit, license, certification, and registration, application processes for Virginians.

“Since day one, we have made it a top priority to improve government efficiency for Virginians. We’ve reduced red tape, streamlined 50,000 regulatory requirements and saved Virginia citizens over $1.2 billion. Now, with our first in the nation approval tracking system, we are making it clearer, easier, and more efficient to apply for these critical approvals and taking a big step towards making Virginia the best place to live, work, and raise a family,” said Youngkin.

The Office of Regulatory Management (ORM) was created in June of 2022 and has since made significant progress in modernizing regulation to alleviate burdens on Virginia citizens and promote transparency throughout the regulatory process.

Reforms implemented by ORM have already yielded impressive results, with agencies shaving over 50,000 regulatory requirements (17.5% of the total number). Enhanced transparency has been at the core of these initiatives. ORM has worked with agencies to ensure that 100% of regulatory actions and guidance document amendments appear online. And it worked closely with the Department of Environmental Quality in connection with a pilot program that ultimately went state-wide as the Virginia Permit Transparency (VPT) permitting dashboard. VPT covers over 100,000 applications issued per year across six agencies. Now that these permits are available online, the participating agencies can turn to tracking and improving processing times.

The Executive Order builds upon these efforts by directing agencies to eliminate obsolete approvals; include approvals involving multiple steps on VPT; reduce the number and complexity of approvals through streamlining; and digitize and enhance the user experience for the approval application process.

Licensing and permitting reform will bring about a dramatic improvement in the Virginian’s experience, enforcing Governor Youngkin’s promise to ensure Virginia is the best place to live, work, and raise a family.